getmusicbee.com
General => MusicBee Wishlist => Topic started by: psychoadept on February 16, 2014, 04:53:14 AM
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Many folks expect sort artist, etc to work like they do in iTunes (as I did initially). Ignore Words helps, but it doesn't cover every scenario (non-english characters, trying to sort by last name, etc). How about having a single setting in Preferences that would force Artist, Album Artist, Title, and Composer to sort by their respective Sort tags, when available? This would vastly reduce the need for custom sort orders.
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Bump - would still really love to see this implemented.
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+1
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+1
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yes i have noticed its quite a common question/ issue raised by iTunes users. Maybe the behavior should be automatic (or at least the default behvior). Not promising - i need to look into it
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+1
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For the next patch update i have changed the behavior so that when sorting by Artist, and a Sort Artist value is entered, then Sort Artist is used. Otherwise Artist is used as now. In all cases the Artist value is displayed. I believe thats the same behavior as iTunes. Ditto for Album Artist, Album, Composer and Title.
You can still sort using the Sort Artist field as now if you wish. The difference is MB automatically generates a sort artist value if no Sort Artist is entered, so depending on the size of your library and how strictly you want to use Sort Artist, that still might be the way to go.
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http://musicbee.niblseed.com/V3_1/MusicBee31_Patched.zip
The only thing i can see that might cause concern is if any of your files have sort artist/ sort album artist mistagged, that will cause albums to be unexpectedly broken or mis-sorted. If we get a number of people raising issues around this i might take the functionality out as i dont want to create an option for it.
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Cool!
I suspect this might catch a few people off guard, but hopefully not too many.
Do Composer and Title also use Ignore Words settings?
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Do Composer and Title also use Ignore Words settings?
composer intentionally doesnt use the ignore words settings - when i did it that way it didnt make sense to me why it would needed for composer
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Seeing it live, my opinion is that it needs a check box. Inconsistencies in some of my tags almost had me headed to the bug reports until I remembered this thread.
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Seeing it live, my opinion is that it needs a check box. Inconsistencies in some of my tags almost had me headed to the bug reports until I remembered this thread.
Or another tab in the tag editor that displayed all the "Sort" value tags
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Seeing it live, my opinion is that it needs a check box. Inconsistencies in some of my tags almost had me headed to the bug reports until I remembered this thread.
Or another tab in the tag editor that displayed all the "Sort" value tags
i have been thinking about doing that as is the case with iTunes. This might sound a slightly strange approach but i might add the "Sorting" tab to the tag editor and in that tab have an option to "enable sorting overrides" not enabled by default so its no surprises for current MB users. But when enabled you can enter the sort override values much like the iTunes sorting tab. That does mean the sort tag values will be updateable in two tags - the custom tags tab and the new Sorting tab
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This might sound a slightly strange approach but i might add the "Sorting" tab to the tag editor and in that tab have an option to "enable sorting overrides" not enabled by default so its no surprises for current MB users. But when enabled you can enter the sort override values much like the iTunes sorting tab. That does mean the sort tag values will be updateable in two tags - the custom tags tab and the new Sorting tab
I was thinking more along the lines off having the five '-Sort' values, currently available in the custom tags, being made permanently available tags in the "Sorting" tab. This then frees up 5 more custom tags slots, another thing that has oft been asked for in the wishlist.
A win-win situation 8)
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I was thinking more along the lines off having the five '-Sort' values, currently available in the custom tags, being made permanently available tags in the "Sorting" tab. This then frees up 5 more custom tags slots, another thing that has oft been asked for in the wishlist.
A win-win situation 8)
+1
What's the fifth tag you're thinking of? I can only think of album, album artist, title, and composer
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I was thinking more along the lines off having the five '-Sort' values, currently available in the custom tags, being made permanently available tags in the "Sorting" tab. This then frees up 5 more custom tags slots, another thing that has oft been asked for in the wishlist.
A win-win situation 8)
That did occur to me and i might still do that but the reason i probably wont do that is it could affect file naming templates and virtual tags
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What's the fifth tag you're thinking of? I can only think of album, album artist, title, and composer
the other one is artist
That did occur to me and i might still do that but the reason i probably wont do that is it could affect file naming templates and virtual tags
It wouldn't be the first time (and probably not the last ;) ) I've had to redo my templates and virtual tags because of a re-think of my custom tag info and order within the tab.
Somewhere in the wishlist is one of mine for MB to notify you of the templates that will be affected by such changes.
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What's the fifth tag you're thinking of? I can only think of album, album artist, title, and composer
the other one is artist
Oh, duh. I had it in my head, but somehow it didn't make it in the list.
That did occur to me and i might still do that but the reason i probably wont do that is it could affect file naming templates and virtual tags
It wouldn't be the first time (and probably not the last ;) ) I've had to redo my templates and virtual tags because of a re-think of my custom tag info and order within the tab.
Somewhere in the wishlist is one of mine for MB to notify you of the templates that will be affected by such changes.
I concur, the benefits of this change outweigh the difficulties. How hard would it be to include a script to convert existing templates? If that's complicated, then maybe a warning message when installing the updated version? And Bee-liever's suggestion of tracking templates makes sense, too.
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I was thinking more along the lines off having the five '-Sort' values, currently available in the custom tags, being made permanently available tags in the "Sorting" tab. This then frees up 5 more custom tags slots, another thing that has oft been asked for in the wishlist.
A win-win situation 8)
+1
What's the fifth tag you're thinking of? I can only think of album, album artist, title, and composer
+1
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+1 for having at least these three directly available:
sort album artist
sort artist
sort composer
(I left out 'sort album', 'sort title', 'sort show', since I personally don't care for those)
I can understand some concern for possibly affecting file naming templates and virtual tags some more experienced users might already have setup, but I am guessing they would welcome and understand this improvement and are willing and able to make the necessary changes in their setups.
And importantly, they would probably also welcome the freed-up available custom tags.
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+1 for having at least these three directly available:
sort album artist
sort artist
sort composer
(I left out 'sort album', 'sort title', 'sort show', since I personally don't care for those)
I just think if it's done for any of them, it should be all
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I just think if it's done for any of them, it should be all
You're probably right.
It would be good to have a clear distinction between 'regular' tags, and actual 'custom' tags.
I remember that confusing me a bit too when I first started using MusicBee. Why would you need the 'custom tag' feature for regular tags?
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Hm, a big oversight, I now see 'artist sort' and 'album artist sort' are already available.
But in drop-down menu's they are to be found under the 's' ('sort artist', 'sort album artist')
Understandable, but for consistency it might be better to have them there under the 'a' ('artist sort' and 'album artist sort').
I ran through all the common tagging fields I am aware of, and made a list of tags that are currently only available by using the custom tag feature.
I divided them in three groups. The first group is what I would really like to see directly available without needing (sacrificing) custom tags.
The second group would be less important to me personally to have directly available, and the third even less.
I.
composer sort order TSOC
subtitle (useful for classical) TIT3
set subtitle (useful for classical) TSST
original album (perhaps useful for classical; work?) TOAL
original filename (useful for classical) TOAF
musician credit list TMCL
language TLAN
remixer TPE4
album sort order TSOA
II.
involved people list TIPL
initial key TKEY
media type TMED
original artist (performer) TOPE
III.
file type TFLT
original lyricist TOLY
file owner TOWN
net radio station TRSN
net radio owner TRSO
international standard recording code ISRC
commercial info WCOM
copyright WCOP
official audio file url WOAF
official artist url WOAR
radio page url WORS
publisher url WPUB
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Many folks expect sort artist, etc to work like they do in iTunes (as I did initially). Ignore Words helps, but it doesn't cover every scenario (non-english characters, trying to sort by last name, etc). How about having a single setting in Preferences that would force Artist, Album Artist, Title, and Composer to sort by their respective Sort tags, when available? This would vastly reduce the need for custom sort orders.
for the next v3.1 update, the editing of sort tags is implemented in a similar way to the iTunes Sorting tab in its tag editor.
The behavior of using the sort values when sorting the associated field (eg. using the value entered for sort artist affects how artist is sorted) is already implemented in v3.1. I have added a setting to disable that new behavior, although i might remove that setting from the GUI for the sake of keeping the settings simpler.
And lastly sort tags are no longer enabled via custom tags - they have their own dedicated input fields now, and hence free's up those custom tag fields. I have implemented some migration code that remaps any custom fields to the new dedicated fields so you should not need to manually change any naming templates. However if you go back to using an older MB version, you will need to manually remap the custom tags.
I will post an updated v3.1 probably on the weekend with these changes.
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Wow, that's awesome! Can't wait to see it in action.
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I like the approach you took, and greatly appreciate the migration code.
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for the next v3.1 update, the editing of sort tags is implemented in a similar way to the iTunes Sorting tab in its tag editor.
The behavior of using the sort values when sorting the associated field (eg. using the value entered for sort artist affects how artist is sorted) is already implemented in v3.1. I have added a setting to disable that new behavior, although i might remove that setting from the GUI for the sake of keeping the settings simpler.
And lastly sort tags are no longer enabled via custom tags - they have their own dedicated input fields now, and hence free's up those custom tag fields. I have implemented some migration code that remaps any custom fields to the new dedicated fields so you should not need to manually change any naming templates. However if you go back to using an older MB version, you will need to manually remap the custom tags.
as mentioned this version migrates any custom sort tags to dedicated tags. If you want to go back to an older 3.1 version, you will need to re-assign the custom tags and redo any naming templates that referenced the custom sort tags
http://musicbee.niblseed.com/V3_1/MusicBee31_Patched.zip
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Did you change how <Year> is handled for sorting? It looks like it normalizes the date format before sorting, perhaps like this:
If so, thank you very much!
My chronological sorting was broken by this update until I tried it without using the above virtual tag formula I had previously set to account for the differences in date format in my files. Now it works as I intended without the virtual tag no matter what format is in the metadata.
In case anyone is wondering: my mp3 files have dates stored as M/d/yyyy and my flac files use yyyy-MM-dd.
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This looks great so far! The conversion appears to have gone perfectly. Working on moving my custom tags into the empty slots now. :D
Edit: Ok, one thing not changed by the conversion was grouping by Sort Composer in one of my custom views. But that's easily fixed.
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Before I jump in, join the pool party, and revise my tagging scheme:
Should I assume that my proposal for the other tags I was wishing for to become regular tags is off the table for the near future?
http://getmusicbee.com/forum/index.php?topic=20494.0
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One thing that isn't working quite as expected on the Sorting tab is that Album Artist and Sort Album Artist are not showing the value defined in Sorting/Grouping under "detect iTunes compilations and treat as Album Artist", when appropriate.
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Edit: Ok, one thing not changed by the conversion was grouping by Sort Composer in one of my custom views. But that's easily fixed.
i see i havent done custom views or playlists, so i will do them for the next update but it will be too late for anyone who has already run the latest version
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Never mind my last post about iTunes Compilations, I think I hadn't got all my tags sorted out yet. I'll report back later.
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Before I jump in, join the pool party, and revise my tagging scheme:
Should I assume that my proposal for the other tags I was wishing for to become regular tags is off the table for the near future?
http://getmusicbee.com/forum/index.php?topic=20494.0
i wont make any further changes for now but i wont rule out making the tag editor completely customisable as a separate project at a later date
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ok, thnx.
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One thing that isn't working quite as expected on the Sorting tab is that Album Artist and Sort Album Artist are not showing the value defined in Sorting/Grouping under "detect iTunes compilations and treat as Album Artist", when appropriate.
i have tweaked how info is displayed for the album artist in the sorting tab so the effective sort value is now always displayed. It doesnt affect in any way the actual sorting results
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Did you change how <Year> is handled for sorting? It looks like it normalizes the date format before sorting, perhaps like this:
If so, thank you very much!
My chronological sorting was broken by this update until I tried it without using the above virtual tag formula I had previously set to account for the differences in date format in my files. Now it works as I intended without the virtual tag no matter what format is in the metadata.
In case anyone is wondering: my mp3 files have dates stored as M/d/yyyy and my flac files use yyyy-MM-dd.
to be honest, needing to use $Date(<Year>,yyyy-MM-dd) made no sense in the first place as MB would still have needed to parse the <Year> field into a valid date in order for the $Date to work. When sorting by date, MB uses the same date parsing.
In any case, one thing i would like to know is have you defined the virtual tag as a Date datatype in Tags(2)/ Fields ?
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to be honest, needing to use $Date(<Year>,yyyy-MM-dd) made no sense in the first place as MB would still have needed to parse the <Year> field into a valid date in order for the $Date to work. When sorting by date, MB uses the same date parsing.
In any case, one thing i would like to know is have you defined the virtual tag as a Date datatype in Tags(2)/ Fields ?
No, it was left as a string.
Dates would be sorted previously, but MM/dd/yyyy would be sorted first and then yyyy-MM-dd would be sorted after those values. Now, for <Year> at least, dates are sorted chronologically without need of a virtual tag. Here's the kicker in case you're curious: I still need to use a virtual tag to sort by the custom tag <Original Year>: $Date(<Original Year>,yyyy-MM-dd) which is currently defined as a string in my settings. Here's how the results are different:
Album Artist/ Sort Original Year (my virtual tag defined above, string)/ Year /Album
-Album covers are sorted first by album artist or sort album artist as expected, then <Original Year> in chronological order regardless of date format, then by <Year> in chronological order regardless of date format, then by album title.
Album Artist/ Original Year/ Year /Album
-Album covers are sorted first by album artist (or sort album artist if present), then the original release year where the date format is MM/dd/yyyy in chronological order, then the original release year where the date format is yyyy-MM-dd in chronological order, then by <Year> in chronological order regardless of format, then by album title.
Make sense? This should be reproducible with dummy files, so here you go: https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/101342440/Test.zip (https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/101342440/Test.zip)
The above files only have the four tags necessary for the sorting I outlined above. The tags were created using only the MB editor and match the differences in my files regarding date format (required by the flac/mp3 tag differences). When sorted chronologically, they should end up arranged alphabetically. Any change in the alphabetical order of the album names will show an error in chronological sorting.
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to sort as a date, any custom or virtual tags need to be configured as Dates in Tags(2)/ Fields
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to sort as a date, any custom or virtual tags need to be configured as Dates in Tags(2)/ Fields
I can confirm that this in not the case with yyyy-MM-dd specifically. yyyy-MM-dd sorts very well as a string because it's designed to work in exactly that way. The virtual tag I outlined, configured as a string, corrects the issue I see when sorting by <Original Year>. I haven't bothered to test my virtual tag as a date because there has been no need. But, for giggles, let's see what happens when I change my virtual tag to a date...
...and nothing changes. Sorting by my virtual tag <Sort Original Year> still fixes the problem, and sorting by <Original Year> still has the problem.
I get why it's hard to understand what I'm saying is happening, that's why I provided files so others can reproduce the issue. Here are the steps, you will need to have the custom tag <Original Year> set up in Tags (1):
1) Place all eight files in your library.
2) Set custom sorting on the Albums view: Album Artist/ Original Year/ Year/ Album
3) Observe they are sorted EFGHABCD
4) Set custom sorting: Album Artist/ $Date(<Original Year>,yyyy-MM-dd)/ Year/ Album where the underlined text is a virtual tag you create (string, date, doesn't matter how it's configured).
5) Observe that the albums are now sorted to ABCDEFGH as they should be based on the dates entered into the <Year> and <Original Year> tags.
There is a problem with how MB sorts by dates that have different but supported formats. Before 3.1.6216, this same issue affected the <Year> tags, but not anymore. Another workaround would be for me to find a date format that my flac and mp3 files could both use, but I'm fine with my fix and don't want to put in the unnecessary work.
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i am saying you need to configure your custom tag <Original Year> as a date field otherwise it will sort as a string. Its not clear to me that you have done that
As you say, for the virtual tag you are using, it will also work with string sorting because of the date conversion function and format used
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i am saying you need to configure your custom tag <Original Year> as a date field otherwise it will sort as a string. Its not clear to me that you have done that
As you say, for the virtual tag you are using, it will also work with string sorting because of the date conversion function and format used
Yes, I have configured my virtual tag as a date, not a string. I want to make sure I'm being clear, the virtual tag is not the problem. It solves the problem. Effectively.
The problem existed, then I made the virtual tag and used it to sort instead of using <Original Year>, then the problem went away. Clear?
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If you're displaying the tag editor docked in the main panel, and you have multiple tracks selected, the Sorting tab is partially cut off at the top (the first line of fields don't display).
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If you're displaying the tag editor docked in the main panel, and you have multiple tracks selected, the Sorting tab is partially cut off at the top (the first line of fields don't display).
Reproduced.
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thats fixed now
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I have added a setting to disable that new behavior, although i might remove that setting from the GUI for the sake of keeping the settings simpler.
Where is this setting located ?
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i didnt include it. For now, you can edit MusicBeeSettings.ini while MB is not running and change <DisableSortAsTags>true</DisableSortAsTags>
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Thanks, it's actually in MusicBee3Settings.ini.
This setting should really be included in the preferences, as it comes in handy (at least in my use cases)
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Sorting\Grouping settings tab has dialogs for editing custom sort artist and album name values. But there's no support for sort title field. Can you add another dialog where custom sort title values can be browsed and edited?
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Also is it intended when no word is entered to "ignore words" setting it defaults to "the"?
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Sorting\Grouping settings tab has dialogs for editing custom sort artist and album name values. But there's no support for sort title field. Can you add another dialog where custom sort title values can be browsed and edited?
no, custom sort titles work differently and are only stored/retrieved from a music file as any tag
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no, custom sort titles work differently and are only stored/retrieved from a music file as any tag
OK. That helps.
I created an auto-playlist that compares title and sort title values to find out files with custom sort title tags.
Since when no word is entered to "ignore words" setting it defaults to "The", you have to enter a made-up word to the setting to clear up sot title values except those having a custom sort title tags. Then "Remove Tags" command can take care of the rest.
I think when no word is entered to "ignore words" setting it shouldn't defaults to "The". It's not the same that "The" is entered to the list when MB is installed and that removing it from the setting defaults to "The".
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no, custom sort titles work differently and are only stored/retrieved from a music file as any tag
Something else is going on. I made sure all custom sort title tags got cleared up in my collection, but now some got the tag from somewhere and those tracks are all I edited title tags after that. For the tagging, I only used album auto tagger, Additional Tagging Tools plugin and MB's native search and replace command. Does MB add sort title tag with the previous value when title tag is edited in a non-manual way?
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i use the album auto-tagger a lot myself and there is no behaviour that additionally saves a sort title tag, and there is no where that sets and saves the sort title apart from the tag editor and in-panel direct editing of a field.
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Thanks for the clarification! Then it must be my mistake. Probably when title was edited, its previously unnoticed sort title tag started working and got my attention as now I realized I had only checked files having different values for the two fields.
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I noticed an issue with sort composer tag when multiple composers are tagged. It would be the same for other sort tags with multiple values.
(https://i.imgur.com/fGwy2VZ.png)
So I used the format "AAA; BBB" for display composer tag and didn't enter any value for sort composer tag for that multi-composer track.
As the screenshot shows, those tags are not treated consistently.
If a sort composer tag is not set for multi-value composer tag, how about sorting it by the existing sort composer value of the first composer?
So in this case "Liszt, Franz" would be the sort composer tag of "Franz Liszt; Giuseppe Verdi" composer tag.
Also the column browser should show two "Liszt, Franz" and two "Verdi, Giuseppe" in sort composer column.
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In the column browser the composer is being split into the individual values, where as thats not possible in the main panel. Are you suggesting the column browser should not be split because its a sort field? If thats what you are saying i can see your point but also i think its useful that it is split
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No, it should split in the column browser but it currently doesn't show each individual tag's existing sort composer value. As the result, it shows two values for composer tag but four values for sort composer tag.
Another request is its main panel sort composer value should be, again, the existing sort composer tag of individual composer tags. So this case I'd like to see either "Liszt, Franz" or "Liszt, Franz; Verdi, Giuseppe" when its own sort composer tag is not set, no matter what the display composer value may be.
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No, it should split in the column browser but it currently doesn't show each individual tag's existing sort composer value. As the result, it shows two values for composer tag but four values for sort composer tag.
i am afraid i still dont get why what is currently being done is wrong. MB splits most tags with ";" into separate values in the column and thumb browsers. Because there is no sort composer for one of the files, MB falls back to the composer which has 2 values when split
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MB falls back to the composer which has 2 values when split
When it falls back to the composer tag and split it into two, then shouldn't it check whether there's an existing sort value for each individual composer tag?
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MB falls back to the composer which has 2 values when split
When it falls back to the composer tag and split it into two, then shouldn't it check whether there's an existing sort value for each individual composer tag?
thats done for the next v3.2 update
http://musicbee.niblseed.com/V3_2/MusicBee32_Patched.zip
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Thanks! Column browser now shows existing sort values for individual composers.
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Looks like there's total character limit in entering sort artist list. Can you increase that?
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when entering the list in text mode?
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Yes
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for the next patch update i have removed the length restriction
http://musicbee.niblseed.com/V3_2/MusicBee32_Patched.zip
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Thanks! Now it's working fine with a long list.
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I have added "composer:" to every item in my sort artist list using text mode, since I only use sort value for composers. This has resolved a lot of issues for me and suggest this could be offered as an option so that users don't have to add that prefix manually every time they add a new sort value.